Doing secular music hasn’t stopped me from being a “church boy”

Nigerian music producer cum singer, Pheelz has said that he still sees himself as the boy who grew up being active in church despite now doing secular music.

The Finesse crooner whose real name is Philip Kayode Moses stated this during a recent interview with MTV Base Africa.

Pheelz recounted how he use to sing and play keyboards in the church, which was run by father who was a pastor in Lagos.

According to Pheelz, he always knew he would switch from producer to artiste. Speaking on his hit song ‘Finesse’ with BNXN, he said it went viral on Tiktok by ‘accident.’

The artiste was asked about his journey as a creative, and he said; “That journey is long, bro. I feel like sometime in my life, I would probably make movie out of all these stories because it’s inspirational to me and I think it can be inspirational to a lot of other people.

“Grinding from Coded Tunez down to running YBNL; making music with Olamide, Fireboy, Adekunle Gold, Lil Kesh, and other artists outside the label… First of all, I wouldn’t change anything for anything because the journey has been beautiful both the ups and the downs.

“But I still see myself as that same kid from my church. That same 10-year-old playing the keys and my dad is doing the sermons. I still see myself as that kid in the choir because it’s still the same passion that drives me and has been driving me all these years.”

In related news…

Award-winning songstress, Simi, has revealed that she used to be a gospel artiste, but she dumped the genre due to low performance pay.

She said that whenever she goes to churches to sing, she would receive as low as N5,000-10,000 and the highest she was ever paid then was N70,000.

Simi made this disclosure this while appearing as a guest on MTV Base Africa’s Official Naija Top 10 programme.

The ‘Smile For Me’ singer revealed that at some point she stopped singing because she wasn’t making enough money from gospel music to pay for studio sections and song promotions. She also said lack of finances, made her accept a deal with a record label that she regretted signing till today.

Simi said; “I actually used to go to a lot of churches to perform. They will pay me like N5k, N10k. Do you know the highest amount of money I actually collected when I was doing gospel [music]? N70,000. And I felt like I had arrived. I still paid a 10 per cent tithe from the money.”